Well, this is equal parts frightening and annoying: malware writers and their lot have been buying up data centers and getting approved for large blocks of IP space. What's that mean? That they can pretty much run rampant.

While local registries are supposed to screen IP applications, in some parts of the world *cough* Eastern Europe *cough* there's not much of a vetting process. The result is that criminals can spam away while victims have no hosting provider or ISP to complain to. And when the tainted IP finally does get shut down—by being effectively quarantined by other ISPs and security folk—the bad guys just walk away, leaving it to rot until a legitimate business can come in and start it back up again.

The fight against botnets and malware is one where we're outspent and undermanned, and if we don't hurry up to evolve with the other team's strategies, we're all in a heap of trouble. [Threat Post via Boing Boing]